Eileen Odom, Verizon

Eileen Odom, president of national operations for Verizon, oversees the carrier’s installation, maintenance and outside plant efforts. She recently talked to Telephony about union labor negotiations, customer satisfaction and efforts to improve Verizon’s efficiency.

On a federal arbitrator’s ruling that Verizon must hire back more than 2300 eliminated jobs in New York: The language is vague. We believe we had an “external event” that was straightforward. It’s a very worthy challenge to have a large union workforce in New York. But even without this decision--and even if the decision had been 100% in our favor--we would still be looking for ways to make changes to our business. Our big imperative is to be able to flexibly deploy resources across our business relative to our customer demand and the revenue we get. We have to find a way to lower the conflict level and find common ground.

On competition, customer satisfaction and churn: We certainly don’t think of ourselves as just reactive to everyone else. We lose customers and we get customers back. We get customers back mainly because of their disappointment in the service they get from others. And even as we watch the number of lines fall off, we’re looking at adding revenue per account, by adding new services.

On the next generation of data services: We don’t believe DSL is the end-all. There are new capabilities in the outside plant that can help us provide the next generation of services that will take us beyond DSL. We’re open to how things play out, in data as well as in video. But fiber to the premises is a big-ticket item. Even with an aggressive deployment, we’re still talking about a 10-year plan. And we really have to understand the FCC ruling before we can bake out the whole strategy. If we found out we still had to unbundle everything, we might change that strategy.

On the privacy implications of using GPS technology in the field: There’s a mindset that says, ‘I am first a lineman, and I choose to work on my own.’ For those people, this could be considered an intrusion and a threat. Our position is that we don’t want to use GPS as a weapon, but we do intend to use it to get eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, and to integrate it into a dispatch system so that we have the most rational approach. We’re trying to get the work to the right person best equipped to complete it.

On overall operational efficiencies: We’ve taken a lot of costs out since the [Bell Atlantic/GTE] merger. We are sort of our own microcosm of best practices and best opportunities. We didn’t have standards of performance before. Everyone was kind of out on their own. It’s the competitive reality and the brutal facts of this environment that make us get serious about it. There are places where automation makes us more efficient, and there are other places where there’s no substitute for a technician in a truck. I want to have the efficiencies that allow me to keep a larger workforce employed because that’s what makes things work so well.